Vintage Golf Ball For Sale/Question...

[astrosrule1]

I'll put a picture up later but I have a question if anyone is knowledgable of vintage golf balls. I recently purchased a storage unit and it belonged to an older man and most everything in it looks to be from the mid-1900's and back. One interesting item is a glass jar he had 6 old looking golf balls in. I was going to just put them in a garage sale and move on but a guy was telling me to do some research on them. So I have been trying but there isn't a whole lot of golf ball info out there.

The one that really interests me I have researched it to be a Square Dimpled Mesh Golf Ball, 1st production was in 1909 and continued until early 1930's and looks like the 1920's is when these were really popular. Doing the research it looks like it should fetch around $30 easily as it is in pretty nice condition other than semi-dirty, however I see some, on occasion, have sold for hundreds and even a couple in the thousands.

My question is how do you figure out what an old golf ball is worth??? I see it has something to do with patterns and name on ball. This one has a very obvious circle pattern BUT if you look at where the circles overlap you can make out triangle patterns on the sides of ball. Also the name "Equitable" I can't find any other golf ball or even articel relating the 2... I see where in the 2000's there was a golf tourney held in NY sponsored by a company called Equitable. So even on the sites where I have found kind of like a blue book price per say of these balls with different values per company I can still find nothing on Equitable....
SO my next question is: Does this make it possibly from a tourney itself and possibly rare since I can't find anymore OR could it be that a lot of small companies made golf balls during this time peroid and its nothng special just the basic $30 ball in its condition??

Last question, the guy who first told me to do some research on it suggested that I take a toothbrush and clean the dirt off it... Suggestions?? I don't want to hurt the value of it.


Sorry for the long read and hopefully somebody can shed some info on this for me, as I know very little about the golfing world!

[astrosrule1]

In this 1st picture you can see the square dimples and "EQUITABLE" across middle and also the circular patterns around the outside.
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In this 2nd picture you can see how the circles form triangular dimples and triangular patterns on sides of ball.
image.jpg